If “meh” was a year…it’d be 2024. Post pandemic, political strife, the lingering effects of the writer and director’s strikes, the rise of AI, and the violation of the most sacrosanct American icon — Mickey Mouse.
While there was a lot of great genre content being churned out in 2024, the highs weren’t really high and the lows weren’t terrible low. This year sat right in the middle of a rather tepid bell curve. I jumped out of my seat, but not too high. I shivered and shook, but not too excitedly. Truth be told, I ended up yawning a lot more than I have in the past several years.
What the best of 2024 brought to the table was creativity. Be it Cuckoo, MadS, Stop Motion, or The Substance, the year took some really fascinating chances. Most importantly, Hollyweird didn’t lean too heavily into sequels/prequels. Sure, there was the latest Alien, Smile 2, A Quiet Place – Day One, and Apartment 7A, but for the most part, the studios tried to forge some new and riveting paths.
Whether you were rightfully frustrated with 2024, or titillated by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, 2024 probably had something for you, for me, and for horror hounds everywhere!
1 – Long Legs
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Directed by Osgood Perkins
You might call this the “feel bad” flick of 2024, or you might just call it a bleak and unrelenting affair. Either way, Osgood Perkins latest offering had this podcaster feeling pretty shook.
Longlegs is a film that will stick with you for days following your viewing. It’s certainly dark and brooding and it will also have you completely rethinking Marc Bolan and TRex. Cannot wait to see Perkins’ next offering, The Monkey, coming to theaters near you in 2025.
2 – The First Omen
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Directed by Arkasha Stevenson
While there’s a surprising lack of Rottweilers, The First Omen is chock full of reproductive rights, secularism, mental health, religious repression, and a gang of scares — most of them well deserved.
Most importantly, The First Omen is a GREAT horror film that will make even the most hardened horror heart thump.
Replete with paisley, smoking, Morricone-like sounds and the glowing hum of aged lens flairs, the film is a masterful cinematic achievement.
3 – The Substance
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Directed by Coralie Fargeat.
Be. Careful. What. You. Wish. For. The most quaint and playful of all the horror tropes is on full display in this masterful piece of body horror. Not your run of the mill body horror either. This is capital “B” body horror that would even make David Cronenberg blush.
2024’s The Substance is part Sunset Boulevard, part Gremlins, part Infinity Pool, part Seconds from 1966, and part GWAR show. Directed by Coralie Fargeat (Revenge), this film excels in its simplicity while at the same time doling out adroit parables, metaphors, and tropes. Most importantly, the film skillfully subverts each and every bias regarding age, beauty, and the American way.
4 – MadS
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Directed by David Moreau.
We all know this teen, or least we know the vain proclivities of teens and their need to be cool. This wild offering follows a teen who stops off to see his dealer to test a new drug before heading off for a hard night of partying. On the way home, he picks up an injured woman and the movie goes from weird to W-I-L-D.
Take our advice, don’t watch the trailer and don’t read anything about MadS before you watch it. Go in cold and let the mania wash over you.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Directed by Chris Nash
This Canadian slasher film roared out of the gates with much buzz from The Sundance Film Festival. As Eric opined “It was bolstered by a menacing trailer that similarly had horror fans excited. It has a great-looking monster, and a few spectacularly gory kills will make this movie pop and evoke fond old memories.”
This is an odd one for sure. If you’re looking for Michael, Chucky, Jason, and Freddy, then you better look elsewhere because this ain’t it.
6 – Infested
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Infested follows residents of a rundown French apartment building who battle against an army of deadly, rapidly reproducing spiders.
This film also expertly explores the class struggle diatribe, using a scrappy group of young survivors of the French underclass pitted against both an infestation of fast-breeding and fast-growing venomous spiders and the law enforcement that should be protecting them. Well-shot, acted, and directed. Not too heavy on the CGI. What more can you ask for in a horror flick!
7 – VHS Beyond
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Directors Jay Cheel, Jordan Downey, and Christian Long
A documentary piece on mysterious videotapes said to contain proof of alien life frames five other tales of found footage sci-fi terror. While the VHS series ebbs and flows throughout the 1980s and 1990s, there’s guaranteed to be some clunkers, but this is not one of them.
When we looked at alien abduction films in podcast episode 136 I proclaimed that the great alien abduction/UFO horror film had yet to be made. VHS Beyond is a close contender for that truly great UHO horror film!
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Creator Little Marvin
Wow, just wow! Them is some of the most frightening and compelling horror to hit streets in years. Following season one’s depiction of the most gruesome racist racism that 1950s Los Angeles had to offer, season two picks up in 1991. The racism is still there, but now the residents of California are forced to face a truly horrifying serial killer. Thank god Pam Grier is there to hold down the fort.
Them is a TV series like no other. Truly unique and singular in its presentation, acting, and cinematic style. There’s only one reason to give Amazon your money and this is it.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Directed by Mikey Hermosa
When Eric and I caught this at the Portland Horror Film Festival, he said “The Invisible Raptor is a crowd-pleaser, plain and simple. This spoof of Jurassic Park flips the script on the behemoth tentpole franchise by not trying to do digital dinosaurs at all. Instead, The team behind The Invisible Raptor did the monster movie without the monster, and it worked brilliantly. This is a meta-movie for the Easter Egg enthusiasts, but be warned, there is so much blood and shit in this movie that it isn’t for the squeamish or the kiddos! (Though the twelve-year-old me would LOVE this movie.)”
Have fun with this movie because that’s what it exactly wants you to do!
10 – Exhuma
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Directed by Jang Jae-hyun
Some call this boring. Some call it long in the tooth. I call it compelling cinema where every last person in the film has something to lose. A perfect mixture of gruesome horror ingredients.
The film follows a bumbling pair of paranormal experts are hired to investigate a curse that has followed a wealthy family for generations. They follow the Pet Sematary trope and decide not to leave the dead along. They’re convinced the solution to their problems is to exhume the dead. Obviously they never saw Pet Sematary. While the film is a little on the aforementioned long-side, Exhuma sure is one pretty film to look at.